


The Bedtime Story

by RurouniHime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bonding, Character Death, Dark, Death Eaters, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fairy Tales, Hate Sex, M/M, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Original Character(s), Post - Half-Blood Prince, Rough Sex, Veela, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there lived a boy in a castle. He was not a very nice boy. He was arrogant and selfish. But this boy had a beautiful name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bedtime Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireElemental79](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=FireElemental79).



> Check out the [The Bedtime Story (Podfic)](http://leemarchais.livejournal.com/40026.html) by the AMAZING leemarchais! (WeasleyWench) ^_^
> 
> ......
> 
> Okay. This is **dark-fic**. Creature fic, contains character death (major and minor), blood, violence, hate-sex, dub-con. **Not a happy story.**
> 
> I felt it was high time I did my obligatory fandom Veela fic! ^_^ Alas, this fic is also my "Wow, that's wrong, even for you" fic. Believe it or not, I was drafting the majority of this story while writing World's Edge. The resulting multiple personality issues I had to put up with in my own brain were appropriately bizarre.
> 
> Some important things: HBP compliant, but… This story is NOT DH compliant. When I wrote it, this story was NOT a reference to any spoilers that were floating around online. This was not my prediction of what would happen, nor was it what I hoped would happen.
> 
> Last but certainly not least, this is probably the most dysfunctional relationship I have ever written. It's also possibly the most true-to-canon Draco (and Harry?) I've tried. But I will see what you all have to say.

_What?_

_A fairytale? But I'm afraid I don't know many. And you've heard them before._

_Hmm?_

_Of course I know some fairytales. Don't be silly. It's time for bed and you should not be filling your head with such— What? Oh no. No, no, no. They aren't nonsense, that's not what I meant. Fairytales are just as real as you make them to be._

_No, not always. They're all based on truth. But not everything about them is true._

_Well… perhaps I do know one, then. If you promise to go to sleep right after, and not nag me with questions? Alright then. Lie down._

_Once upon a time there lived a boy in a castle. He was not a very nice boy. He was arrogant and selfish. But this boy had a beautiful name._

_He lived with his mother and father, and they loved him very, very much. They gave him everything his heart could possibly desire._

_But this boy had also been given a terrible curse. A magical curse, set to change him when he reached adulthood, into a monster. There was only one cure: to find the one person who would see him as a monster, and still love him._

_His family searched far and wide, across their kingdom and the next, and the next after that, to find a suitable companion. But there were none that were right, none that were strong enough._

_Now, my little one, let us call this boy the Prince of Snakes, for to say his real name is older magic, and dangerous. When the time for his transformation drew near, the Prince of Snakes' parents sent him to the last kingdom in the land, the Kingdom of Stars. And in that kingdom, there lived another boy… who also lived with a fearsome curse._

_Long ago, the Kingdom of Stars had been ravaged by the Lord of Night. This lord was a vile thing that crept in the shadows and held the people of the land under his mantle. He had cursed the Prince of Stars years ago, weaving their destinies together._

_What?_

_Of course it does. Silly creature. How do all fairytales end?_

_Exactly. Now, are you ready for me to go on?_

_It took a long time; the dark magic of the Lord of Night made the two boys hate each other, and they fought and quarreled every day. Indeed, the magic of the Lord of Night was spreading again through the land, twisting everything in its path. But one day the Prince of Snakes discovered that the Prince of Stars was the one he had been seeking, the one who could lift his curse._

_Ah but… You know, I do not think that is the best way to tell this story. I have forgotten what really happened. Perhaps, just this once, you mischievous imp, I shall let you stay up late, and tell it again?_

_Alright._

* * *

_Once upon a time there lived a boy in a castle. He was not a very nice boy. He was arrogant and selfish. But this boy had a beautiful name. He lived with his mother and father, and they loved him very, very much. They gave him everything his heart could possibly desire._

_But this boy was also given a terrible curse by the oldest ancestors of his family. A magical curse, set to change him when he reached adulthood, into a monster. There was only one cure: to find the one person who would see him as a monster, and still love him. His family searched far and wide, across their kingdom and the next, and the next after that, to find a suitable companion. But there were none that were right, none that were strong enough._

 

Draco Lucius, of the house of Malfoy, knew his curse, possibly before he even knew his full name, though he did not recognise it for what it was at the time. It was a burn in his body. It rent through him in hot, spiteful shards and carved words into his innards, _Wait,_ it said, _wait for me, go where you will go, but know that I will find you out there._ It was a soothing voice, a protective voice, or it was a damnable, thirsting rasp, he could not remember, being so small at the time. But that confusion of fourteen years' waiting was ended one windy August night as he sat deep in a silver velour chair in his father's study.

Lucius Malfoy stood in front of the fire, hair gleaming in molten strands in the flames' light. Despite his disclosure of a moment before, his eyes still held a hint of secrecy that Draco both wanted and did not want to be privy to.

"Do we seem so inhuman to you, Draco?" His father's hand trailed over the back of the velvet couch beside him, drifting across the shoulders of the other person seated in the room. Draco's mother's eyes never left his face, and he could feel her taking in his every response to the news her husband had so directly imparted to him. Taking it in, and filing it wherever she placed her thoughts.

Draco looked at his father. "Not inhuman, no. I think I always suspected."

"That, Draco Lucius, is the power of the Veela. To be human, and yet not. Still, we bridge the chasm between, and that you must always remember."

"You are Veela, Father?"

Lucius cast him a shrewd glance. "Only part. Your mother has the same blood running through her veins as well, though not in the same quantity."

Draco looked down at his own lithe hands, his white skin, the way the firelight played over the contours of his body. "We are not pureblooded?"

An irate hiss snapped in the silence. "Do not place the Veela alongside Muggle filth, Draco Lucius."

Draco continued to study his own skin. "How old will I be when it manifests?"

"You mistake yourself, Draco, and your inheritance. It is not a question of years, nor of days or nights, of dates and times. You are your own person, a sentient being still capable of some control. It will come in its own time, and you will know it immediately."

Draco shook his head and smirked a little. "And what if I choose to be without it?"

His father's eyes met his steadily. "Oh, I assure you, Draco… your heritage will be impossible to resist. Even for you, my stubborn son. And you will not wish to give it up so easily."

"I'll be more powerful, then."

"Beyond words." His mother's voice. It settled gently on the still air. He looked at her, waiting, but she said nothing more. Draco's father stepped toward him, passing between them.

"Think of it simply as an extension of yourself, for that is what it is. You will wield it as easily as breathing, given time, and it will assist you in absolutely everything you set out to do."

Something dropped into his tone and Draco looked up. Both of his parents were eyeing him like predators having sighted a curious glimmer of movement in the darkness. Expectant… Waiting.

"Everything?" he murmured. Lucius lifted his chin. His hand came to rest on the back of the couch, fingers brushing gently against the nape of his mother's neck. A small smile twitched her elegant lips.

Draco's stomach jumped the tiniest bit.

"In this, and this alone, do we allow the inhumanity of it to slide through, Draco." His father's voice moved through the room, rich and lustrous. The tapestries absorbed it, softened the sound.

"A mate," Draco whispered.

His father nodded curtly. "It is your birthright. The Veela is a sexual creature by nature. It succumbs to the frailties of its own bestiality. There is nothing I can say, nothing either your mother or I can do, to prepare you for what is coming."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"Oh, it is not unpleasant, my son. Far from it. But it is lasting." Lucius met his eyes and Draco stared back. Something roiled within his father's irises, dark and sharp. Then it was gone. "Once a moon, Draco. For five nights you will be reminded of your baser elements."

His father paused. "And on one of those nights…"

The air quieted. Except for the fire, the room was a motionless tableau. Then Lucius looked at him sharply. "Make no mistake, Draco, you will choose your own mate. And you will know when you have found someone worthy of such a choice. However, it is no guarantee, your choice, and it can be overridden. First and foremost remember that the mind is ultimately more powerful than the body. We are human beings, not lesser creatures. It is the difference between Veela and common, detestable beasts. Do not forget that."

"I won't know my mate instantly?" Draco asked.

His father stopped. Dark, firelit eyes narrowed. "Don't be obtuse, boy." The twist of disgust and disappointment on his father's features stung. "This is not some silly fairytale."

Draco raised his eyes at last, fixing his father with a calm stare, and spoke low. "Then I can have whomever I want?"

Silence. The thin, slow smile that spread over his father's face told Draco his intentions had been well understood. He nodded.

"And what if my mate does not return my feelings?" Draco ventured. His mother's eyes flickered briefly. The fire spat, igniting resin, and cast her face into shadow again.

"My son," his father intoned, "when you fully realise what you _are_ and all that it entails, none will have a chance of resisting you."

* * *

_Let us call this boy the Prince of Snakes._

_When the time for his transformation drew near, his parents sent him to the last kingdom in the land. And in that kingdom, there lived another boy who also lived with a fearsome curse._

_You remember the curse, my darling? Good. Then I shall go on._

_Long ago, the kingdom had been ravaged by the Lord of Night. This lord was evil, a vile thing that crept in the shadows. He had cursed the kingdom's prince, the Prince of Stars, years ago, weaving their destinies together._

_You must understand, my love. The evil magic made the two boys hate each other, and they fought and quarreled every day. Indeed, the magic of the Lord of Night was spreading again through the land._

 

Draco's first heat came early, in May of his sixth year, spurred into existence by the seventh year Ravenclaw boy who found him in the Room of Requirement hallway and pushed him up against a thick oaken door in a breathless, keening, confused moment of incoherency. The hands clutching his hips, sliding over his chest beneath his clothing, touching the still visible scars on his face and torso, sparked a fire in his gut. With each helpless gasp, each pant, each twist of fingers in his hair, the burning rose and licked at Draco's innards, searing, pulsing, pounding pounding pounding until Draco spun the boy and slammed him back through the door onto the floor.

Hands on his face… clenched teeth and ridiculous whispers of "love" and "can't" and "gods" were all Draco recalled hearing afterward. It was his first experience with sex, and it twisted with the magic-soaked voice of his first partner, who reeled in the aftermath for days. Draco had never known such peace as he knew in those five days.

It was on the last of those days that he discovered the solution to the suicide order placed on him the previous summer.

And it was within two weeks that he left Hogwarts forever.

* * *

_The Lord of Night came and snatched the Prince of Snakes away. The prince tried in vain to escape. But his parents were under the sway of the evil lord, and they locked him inside their castle and bound him with magical spells and signs, and he could not get free._

_There, in the darkness of the castle, he changed at last, and became the creature he was destined to become._

 

The bowels of the dungeons in the north were deep and moss-ridden. It was cold. Sunlight had never once touched the stones at the very bottom, a foundation built in the roots of darkness.

The Dark Lord sat on his dais and beckoned Draco forward. Draco knelt, sweeping his black cloak aside, scattering dust.

"You come of your own free will, Draco Lucius Malfoy?"

Draco met red eyes steadily. He raised both arms, rolled the left sleeve carefully to his elbow, and held it out before him. "I offer my flesh as proof, my lord. Given willingly, by a loyal servant."

"And do you understand this sacrifice, Draco Lucius Malfoy?"

"I understand fully, my lord."

Voldemort stood, cloaked in the blackest and finest of velvet. His curled fingers hovered over the pale skin in front of him. Draco felt the Dark Lord step into his mind, and stared unblinkingly as his memories ceased to be his own.

"Your trial task, you have accomplished, Draco," the man-thing said softly. "For you, the ends do indeed justify the means, however different they were from what was foreseen. Your efforts will not go unrewarded."

He placed three long fingers against the skin of Draco's arm, and Draco chewed through his lower lip to stop his screams from erupting into the air alongside the singe and smoke of his flesh.

He left the hall afterward, barely holding back until reaching his room, where he vomited on the floor, tried to forget what he'd just done, tried not to wonder why he'd gotten off so easily for such a plain and obvious failure.

His second heat was slow to arrive, but quick to burn.

* * *

It wasn't planned; Draco hardly desired to spend the afternoon in a sudden stalemate with the Weasel in the dilapidated grime of a ramshackle cabin. Weasley's blue eyes were wide and furious, his wand steadier than it should have been, and Draco breathed hard, feeling time creeping up on him, itching to throw the first spell and have done.

It wasn't planned. He'd planned for Potter instead, like last time, and this complicated matters.

"Drop it, Malfoy," Potter hissed, coming through the door at last. His wand was trained on Draco's chest. Draco lowered his arm immediately, perhaps a bit too fast; Weasley jumped.

"At last," Draco exhaled. "Someone I can have a civil conversation with." And then he laughed at the very idea.

"What are you doing back here?" Potter hadn't moved. His face was hard and shivering around the edges. As if he didn't like what he might have to do, but had come to terms with it anyway. Draco calmed the twinge of fear in his chest and smirked.

"Send your troll away."

Weasley shot forward with a hoarse cry, only to be restrained by Potter's free arm. Never taking his eyes off Draco, Potter leaned over and whispered something into Weasley's ear. Draco thought he heard "…not the time…" before Potter fell silent once more.

"Fine… Malfoy." Potter squeezed Weasley's shoulder and nodded ever so slightly. "I'll play. He'll go. And you will say what you have to say so we can all be done with this again."

Draco was quiet as Potter checked him for magical tracking devices. He felt the magic sting at his arms and face, ruffling through his clothes like some errant serpent. Now that the time had come, it was difficult to voice what he intended.

The door closed behind a grumbling Weasley and Potter looked at him carefully. Draco met his gaze, and saw the other man's mask falter. Potter blinked, licking his lips. "And what the hell might you want now?" he bit out. Draco saw his eyes flash and felt satisfaction like some strange elixir coursing through his bloodstream.

He wished he didn't have to answer, and even more so that he didn't have to tell the truth this time. Being here was humiliating enough, despite his motives.

"I need your help." It was out. And Potter's lack of surprise infuriated him.

"Again, Malfoy?" Such blandness. Draco bristled.

"What, Potter?" he snapped, turning away against his better judgment. The room's dampness and its moulding walls were hardly enough to distract from the shame of such a request. "Your generosity has limits? Monday all is well, we're good to go, but come Wednesday, oh, pack your bags, the Saviour of all Wizardom hasn't the _time_."

Potter rolled his eyes, but there was nothing playful about it. Only exasperation, and extreme distaste. "Stop your stalling or I'll choke you with Veritaserum again."

Well, well. The boy had grown up. Draco spread his arms and summoned a smirk. "Whatever you need to do to feel safe, Potter."

The other man moved toward him so fast, so suddenly, that Draco could not help himself, and jerked back toward the window. A strange little smile crossed Potter's face. "Now. What do you want?"

Draco took a deep breath, already loathing the four musty walls and the dank darkness outside the cracked windows. "Protection," he gritted out. "Your incomparable protection."

"And you expect to get that with your winning personality?"

Draco smiled finally, a real smile. "Give it time, Potter. I have my moments."

Harry Potter did not look amused.

* * *

_Oh, my love, Veela are extraordinary creatures. Do you know they can change shape? From one to the other, just like that! And a true Veela's wings stretch nearly the height of two grown men. No, my darling, no feathers. They are not angels, after all._

_But the most important thing is that a Veela is not susceptible to the incompetence of human magic. Only the oldest spells have any effect, and there is no potion on earth that cannot be filtered out by the Veela himself._

_But to continue, because it is already growing so late._

_There was one last chance: If he could find his true love and perform the spell, they would be bound forever, and his curse would be no more._

_The Prince of Snakes knew of such a magic, and he had never felt the call of another soul until he met the Prince of Stars. One night, he broke out of the castle and began to search for him._

 

It was the twelfth night since Draco had arrived at the safehouse, and Potter hadn't moved. His face held all the blankness of a granite slate, and yet there was a steady tickle in the air. Potter's barely contained magic rolled about the room in sleepy huffs. Midnight air. Draco ignored the odd lurch in his innards and sneered.

"Come now, Potter. You could be entertaining, at the very least." It was almost enough just to have Potter glare at him. He'd gotten quite good at amusing himself at the Boy Saviour's expense.

Potter waited in the center of the room, eyeing him as he had every night for the past week. Always the unwilling guardian. But tonight felt off. Standing there trying to find his center, Draco felt strangely jumpy, as if his skin were skittering away without him.

Potter stared at him, and Draco was struck again by the lack of malevolence there. Only a slow, simmering anger just beneath the surface. Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes suddenly. When he raised his head again, he looked old.

"Malfoy?"

Draco curled his lip, fighting with the jumping of his nerves. "Don't you dare pity me, Potter."

Potter's eyes flickered. He looked away. His shoulders shivered once and when he looked back, the cold, tightened anger was clearer than ever. "Why in the world would I bother? You come here for sanctuary. Don't expect me to care."

"Ah, but you do care, don't you? You have to care about everyone." Draco took several deliberate steps around Potter. Night was coming on fast; he could feel it, and he was uncomfortable. It suddenly wasn't his body, even with the words he knew, the familiar dance they had engaged in every night since his first arrival nearly two weeks ago. He leaned in close and hissed between his teeth. "Even Snape."

Potter's backlash was startling. He whirled, eyes sparking in his face, and shoved Draco hard with one hand. "I want him dead. You understand?" Potter's body was shaking. He advanced too quickly, was suddenly a foot away from Draco. "I should kill you for what you did."

Draco blinked and snarled. His skin felt stretched. "Then do it, you spineless excuse for a Gryffindor. I obviously deserve it."

Potter's body shuddered again inexplicably. Draco took a deep breath. Potter pursed his lips, reining in emotions that were stinging the nerves under Draco's skin as if they were tangible things. "I don't know what you deserve," he ground out.

Draco stepped closer, suddenly angry in his own right. "Not the help of the Boy Who Lived, I see," he spat. "Tell me, Potter, who does get your help? Without strings attached?"

"Shut the fuck up, Malfoy," Potter answered in a lethal tone.

But Draco moved closer. He felt as if he were seeing things through a film, making the motions but not understanding them. "Which people, Potter? Your friends? Maybe just your little Order. Not those who come to you for help."

And then Draco wanted it back. He didn't need help, he wanted… No. Did he even want help? Suddenly he couldn't be sure. The shadows were crawling up the walls, his skin was crawling, he couldn't stay still.

Potter's body shook, the tangle of his magic vibrating through the air and striking Draco's skin. It was tantalising and furious. Draco stretched out and Potter came forward with a soft hiss. Fear struck low in Draco's belly. He backed up.

"You don't deserve my help." Harry's eyes were wide, blazing, his voice weaker than before. "I should throw you back to your master."

"Why don't you," Draco whispered. He felt filled with heat, and night was sweeping up, darkening the walls of the room, throwing Potter's face into a twist of blues and grays. His muscles throbbed, aching, hurting.

Something slithered through Potter's expression. Eyes grown dark widened and contracted again into narrow slits. "Because, you— you—"

Draco suddenly saw where it was going, like a thunderous wave crashing over him. "I what?" He was inches away now, and he wanted to rend and tear and clutch, and Potter's eyes spit sparks at him.

What happened after was painful. Potter was angry and Draco… Well. He was in his fourth heat. It was a terrible, glorious time for sex.

Draco found the entire idea degrading. To be in heat, like some lower species of animal. It was what fueled him, however, the rake of Potter's nails down his back a forgotten buzz, the scrabble to merge with his chosen partner for the night blazing through his nerves. The agony hung just on the edge of his senses, driving him, spurning him. Lifting him above the pains of the flesh until afterward. But he ended the encounter with the knowledge that he had both fucked, and been fucked by, Harry Potter.

 _Look what you're doing, Potter,_ delivered with a smile, his back scraping against the cold, rough wall. Potter looked him directly in the eye.

_I know exactly what I'm doing._

Draco's climax felt wildly elated because he too knew what he was doing. His sleep several minutes later was deep and uncontested.

* * *

The next night, Draco went back to the frozen dungeons in the north. He retired to an empty chamber with one stone table and wrote by guttering candlelight all that he had seen and heard, but nothing of what he'd done. When the first candle flickered out, Macnair stood in the doorway, gray-black hair drifting, thin frame a beacon on the second of his five nights.

Macnair spoke in a low voice that Draco wanted to silence. And there were more urgent flares to quench. He stood, stretching his fingers out, curling them, and the man was on him, hands scrabbling, panting. Eyes rolling. Draco licked every drop of need from the air, his own body a twitching, seeking mass beneath his skin, knowing that in this case at least, possession was not a question.

Draco fucked Macnair long enough to understand that the man was nothing more than an outlet to sate his desires. Macnair grinned up at him, howled when he came, and watched heavy-lidded as Draco rose from the table and righted his clothing. Draco felt dirty, yet cleansed at the same moment, and did not grace Macnair with more than an instant's glance when he spoke.

"I'll expect you back for the rest of the week until this ebbs."

"Kitten, am I your—"

"Do _not_ sully the idea with your own image."

Macnair did not speak anymore during their trysts, not even when Draco thrust into him until the man came, whining in his throat like a wounded dog. But the hopeful look in his eyes told Draco the idea had not died in Macnair's mind. It made him laugh long into the darkness when he left whichever room he'd chosen for their activities.

* * *

Draco wondered often if falling into the bed of his master's arch nemesis had really been what the horrible, twisted man had in mind. The information he brought back precluded it, eclipsed it in the deep shadow of something much more favourable, and Draco hardly felt the need to be bothered with such details. As it was, he could only tell his lord so much; whatever else he might be, Harry Potter was no fool. He kept Draco well enough at arm's length, and there was barely a time when Draco actually met anyone else in that safe house. They were all there, surely: the Weasel and the werewolf, a plethora of faceless Aurors, a disgustingly familiar girl with changeable hair and a Black's heart-shaped face, and that horrid Mudblood. Sometimes he even saw the youngest Weasley, come to slouch into Potter's arms for an exasperating moment of whispering and hateful sapphire-eyed glances toward his shadowy corner. Draco hated the Weaslette, but enjoyed the way she cringed under his glare and then railed back with furious trembling. Oh, how he hated her.

Voldemort was furious enough at the lack of anything concrete. Something to mould into a plan of attack, but really, Draco was beginning to believe there was nothing there in Potter's glorious Order except for penetrating glances and nights full of absolutely agonizing almost-ecstasy. On the days he did manage to work his way into the cold, damp room to wait for Potter's scowling face, he was much too self-contained to relish the solitude of it. To admit that he liked it.

But there was little need for Macnair often enough now. Others were drifting into the Dark Lord's circle, young and old, scarred and lively with the mistaken ease of new power, or simply frightening with their hollowed-out eyes and glittering stares. Those ones, the older ones, saw him for what he truly was when he entered the room, and shied away, gazed in awe, but never, ever let him leave their sight. Voldemort cherished the information of his older servants above all, save one; Draco's presence in his merry little band was the only thing that held higher worth.

It danced delicately in Draco's brain during the nighttime that he still did not know why he should be so favoured, why his paltry excuse of reconnaissance should be given precedence over the much more useful and direct information of Ministry spies and twitchy Death Eaters wearing the cloaks of the First War.

But watching them watch him, feeling their shudders rippling through the air like some invigorating breeze across his very nerves, Draco was beginning to suspect the reason.

* * *

_What, my love?_

_Something scary? Is this story not scary enough?_

_Oh, well, alright then._

_A Veela is a very powerful creature. It does not think like you and me. It sees in light and darkness, with eyes that glow like hot stars. But the scariest of all is when a Veela Rises._

_You see, my love, when a Veela Rises, it comes just before death. Not always the Veela's own death, but death in some form._

_But the white light burns hottest when it is the Veela who is dying._

 

There was no one to hear his arrival at the ramshackle house, no one but Potter left to look up from the weak fire he'd been tending in that horrid little room. Draco sneered at the cold, the soak of rain through his clothes and hair, the preposterous inclination to come back on this night of all nights.

But there were secrets to be discovered.

"Well, well. All alone, Potter?" He flung his pack right into the middle of the floor, kicking aside the other man's as he crossed the groaning boards. The curtains of the four-poster hung wilted and half shut, and Draco could see the tangle of unmade bedding in the shadows they cast. So Potter had been here for at least a night already.

The other man glowered at him, not even bothering to rise from his patch of worn floorboards. "Thought I changed those wards."

Draco leered at him, leaning close enough to brush his knuckles over the top of Potter's hair as he passed behind him. "Would it make you feel any better if I said you had?"

Oh, but he was feeling careless tonight. The darkness did not seem as heavy as it usually did and damn it all, but the blasted room was warm. At the very least. Harry Potter scowled and Draco felt the hysterical urge to laugh. He swiveled on his heel and came back, crouching just behind the other man, not an inch from his rigid back.

"And did I ruin your quaint little evening alone?" he purred.

Harry rose with a jerk, distancing himself and leaving Draco staring up at him. One of Potter's hands clenched into a fist and relaxed, then clenched again. Draco watched impassively, noting the keen curl of Harry's fingers with sharp interest. Now when had that become so intriguing?

"Where are all your little friends?"

Potter seethed beneath the surface but admirably kept his voice low. "Because I would tell _you,_ of course."

It made him angrier than it should have, but Draco counted it as part and parcel to the passage of the month and dismissed it with only an instant's pause. It was his fifth night, and the light at the end of the tunnel was drawing closer by the second. It didn't matter what the form of emotion was at this point; he would drink it all in and convert it to what he needed it to be: the solace of five nights, and at least this time it wasn't the degrading presence of Macnair.

It took them less than an hour to begin circling each other. Draco lashed his tongue like a whip, striking Harry's flesh and thoughts with whichever barbs popped into his mind first. He hardly remembered any of them, just the feel of the sounds flowing over his tongue and the delicious crackle of Harry's energy, spiking at each insult. It was like blood to a vampire, forgiveness to a dying man.

But he never counted on the moment when he lunged at Harry.

He'd nearly bitten through the other man's lower lip before he realised where he was. Draco pushed himself back, blinking through the odd haze. When had he… And why? How had Harry let him get so close?

The strangest: Harry was not pushing him away.

"Well, Malfoy," he murmured, so close his breath was warm over Draco's forehead. "Wasted all that time. You can just ask, you know."

 _Just beg._ Draco snarled and lashed out, snapping Harry's wrist into his grip and jerking him into a bruising kiss. That terrible thing inside him reared its head interestedly. Clawed its way into the kiss and whispered, laughed, strained there. Harry tore his mouth away and shoved him backward, at the same time grabbing his muddied shirt collar and yanking it free of its threadbare strands. Draco felt it tear and snarled again, less out of anger and more because it felt right, as if it were scripted and he only waited to be given his cue. And there was still plenty to hate about Harry Potter anyway.

Plenty of fuel for either means.

"I hardly need to _ask_ when you do it so well already, Potter," he hissed. Harry's body stiffened; his eyes flashed an acidic green. If Draco were a mere human, he might have fallen. But he doubted Potter knew his own power.

His answer, if not verbal, was just as forceful: capable hands gripped the hem of Draco's shirt and jerked it over his head. Draco staggered but still managed to return the favour, and they fought for an endless moment over nothing that felt like everything, though in the end it hardly mattered who had shed the final piece of clothing.

Harry's fingers pressed into his flesh. He pushed Draco onto the bed and straddled him. Draco thrust up and Harry's eyes sparked. His hips ground into Draco's in a slow, creeping roll. "You get awfully excited at night, don't you?"

Draco sneered at him. "Just the nights I'm feeling lucky, Potter. Nothing to do with you."

Harry's grin was strange and empty. His hand wormed between them and Draco's air left him in a rush. Harry ducked his head and bit his collarbone. Draco clenched Harry's hair and pulled him into a kiss he knew would leave his lips tender. He could taste the blood pulsing just beneath Potter's skin, tantalising and just the other side of sweet. His body was filling with heat, spilling over into twitching muscles and screams in his head.

"Potter, if there is some sort of problem, may I remind you I am not that fragile tart you spend your time with—"

Harry snarled. "Don't talk about her."

"Perfect topic for this moment, isn't it?" Draco drawled. Harry's eyes snapped as he jerked Draco's head forward again and punished his mouth with his own. Draco's entire body hummed and Harry's body convulsed. He lifted his head, looking dazed.

"What…" He stared at Draco.

"Does she do that for you?" Draco murmured. Harry's eyes darkened so suddenly that Draco blinked. Then his legs were being lifted, Harry was on him, _in_ him, and Draco felt something inside him give way. It pulsed into his ribs, his brain, his groin and stomach, the tips of his fingers and hair and eyelashes, now now now NOW _NOW_

Draco gasped and wrenched himself away from Harry's mouth. He blinked at the ceiling, clutching fistfuls of dark hair. His body rocked hard with the other man's thrusts, bunching the sheets up beneath them. He could feel teeth at his throat. Harry's smell overwhelmed him and he felt darkness sweeping over him.

Was this… was this?

For one instant, time froze, and then Draco cast the thought away in a cloud of fear. He sought Harry's mouth and lost himself there, feeling the other man come apart inside him, the ephemeral aches and cuts welling through the waning heat of his own body. For a breathless moment, his body tried to go somewhere else, to do _something_ else. But Draco was too far gone to see it for what it was.

It wasn't until Harry rolled away from him, and sleep was jerking at him with insistent, sated fingers, that he figured out what had very nearly happened.

* * *

_Now, Veela are very peculiar creatures. Forget all those stories you have heard about the one true mate, the soul bond. It is not very well known, but Veela can mate again and again, with or without their bonded partners. I am not saying it is a pleasant experience. The bond is strong and often precludes any mating with anyone else. But it is not impossible._

_A true bond, however, can only happen once a moon. Each Veela is different. A Veela chooses his or her mate, and then allows for the bond to occur; encourages it to occur. It must be thought through, made to happen, accepted, or a Veela will go unbound to the end of its days._

_Well. The story. The Prince of Snakes searched far and wide for his one true love. But the journey was perilous. There were thorn forests and pits of fire. And there were evil beings trying to keep them apart._

 

The sky was bloody red. Draco dropped the dead Muggle into the dust at his feet. His nerves sang with the scent of rust. Perhaps the sky _was_ bleeding.

"Gods, Draco…"

Draco turned and saw Blaise Zabini. The man flinched, averting his eyes. He shuddered, and one hand twitched uncontrollably at his side.

"I'm going," was all Draco said. Zabini called after him, his voice a hovering plea, fingers already stretching toward him, but Draco could feel night drawing up.

_Make no mistake, Draco, you will choose your own mate. And you will know when you have found someone worthy of such a choice. However, it is no guarantee, your choice, and it can be overridden. First and foremost remember that the mind is ultimately more powerful than the body. We are human beings, not lesser creatures. It is the difference between Veela and common, detestable beasts. Do not forget that._

Draco Apparated away from the smouldering village and away from the echo of his father's words. He took his report to the chamber of the Dark Lord and waited on bent knee for twenty minutes before Voldemort turned hemorrhagic eyes on him and lifted his hand.

"The village has been destroyed, my lord."

A single, hissing breath. "And Zabini?"

"Burning the bodies."

A satisfied murmur. The thin hand rose again and Draco got to his feet. Glittering, inhuman irises stared right through him.

"You suit us well, Draco Lucius Malfoy." The man-thing straightened, settled back in his chair. "Find what you require for the night; your services will not be needed for the next five days."

Draco nodded, waited until he was dismissed, and went down into the winding dungeon corridors. He would find _who_ he required. But the night stole up and when Draco pressed a gasping Adrian Pucey facedown into his mattress, drinking in his throaty moans of pleasure like an elixir, he did not know if he had actually found that person.

* * *

The safe house was dark, and the sunset was a pale orange glow through tattered curtains. The little fire popped and cracked feebly, warming the room. Draco sat on the bed. He felt on edge, but strangely subdued. His mind was clear of the fog his heats usually brought upon him. He watched Harry tug his clothing off.

Nervousness did not befit a Malfoy. It felt wrong in his chest, hanging limply against his sternum and trembling with each beat of his heart. Veela chose their mates. It was natural, and the mate in question could hardly not be equally enamoured. Draco knew his charms were insurmountable, should he wish them to be. If he thought hard enough, felt hard enough, he could bring Potter to his knees right there in the middle of the floor, bathed in white light, body shuddering through his unassisted climax.

"What's wrong with you?" Harry eyed him, brows knit. "Would have thought you'd be all over me, as usual."

Draco curled his lip. "Oh, if only you knew the things I could do to you."

Harry approached, stalking like a dark jungle cat across the room. "Well, do them, then." He crawled onto the bed, snaking his head over Draco's throat. His breath fluttered across his skin. One hand insinuated itself under Draco and up to rest in a warm knot against the small of his back.

"Why are you here, Potter?" he asked.

The other man looked at him keenly. "Going to make me say it this time?"

Draco glared back stonily. Harry laughed.

"Because, as you are so quick to point out, she doesn't give me what you give me."

 _What you give me._ Draco breathed. Harry smirked at him and Draco smirked back.

"As if I ever gave you a thing in your life, Potter."

Harry's eyes narrowed. He began to move his body, slowly at first, then speeding up, breath coming faster. His fingers fumbled with Draco's shirt, wrenched at his trousers. Draco beat them away and relished the harsher movements when they returned. Draco grabbed him and rolled him, but Harry was stronger. He shoved Draco up and away, and was on him in a flash, yanking the clothing from his body. He darted his head down and plundered Draco's mouth, and Draco felt the first tangle of that strange, obscene heat stir in his gut.

He grabbed Harry's hair and pulled. Harry bit his chest lightly, clawed at his bare skin. He could feel every scrape like a raw slice drawing blood. His heart thudded in his throat, but he managed to get the words out. Breathless, right at Harry's ear.

"Take me."

Harry stiffened and jerked up. His body glistened orange in the firelight. For a long moment his expression twisted into uncertainty. One hand lifted and hovered over Draco's chest. "Is this some kind of… What did you say?"

Draco squirmed against Harry's hips and scowled. "Don't think I can't make it hurt you just as much as usual, Potter," he spat.

Harry's eyes gleamed. He lowered his head and inhaled deeply, his nose and lips centimetres from Draco's chest. Draco shivered. Harry rose up and looked him right in the eye.

"Make it hurt, Malfoy."

Then he was moving, tongue deep in Draco's mouth, jerking him up into his lap. Draco hissed as Harry's fingers breached him. He locked his legs around the man's waist and raked fingernails over his shoulders. Harry wrenched his head back and sucked on his throat. Draco's neck ached. The heat was rising in his body, tight and curling, searing into every limb. It was _different_ , gods, it burst and pulled and twisted. Harry's hands found his hips and lifted his body. A flash of green irises in the lamplight, and then he was pushing into Draco, sliding him down over his length. Draco's mouth fell open. He heard the suck of air as his nails clenched into Harry's back. The heat billowed and sparked and Harry gave a low, helpless groan. He sagged; his mouth latched onto Draco's, senseless words passing his lips, and he thrust up wildly, pulling Draco against him so tightly his ribs ached. Draco clung to him, hips beginning that swift, dangerous roll that only Harry was privy to. He bit and clawed and fell hard against the head of the bed, Harry's weight shoved up against him, inside him, _through_ him, his body was burning holes within itself, and when the voice climbed up inside and whispered now now now NOW _NOW_ , Draco squeezed his eyes shut and whispered back.

_Yes._

* * *

Harry stirred, chuckling weakly, and rolled off of him, flinging one arm over his eyes. His legs were a dark span of sweaty skin, one propped up to catch the fire's glow, and Draco was left half against the old headboard, trying to sort out what had not happened.

And what had.

His hand shook where it rested against his bare thigh. The slightest of tremors. He'd felt nothing different, no flash of fire, no wondrous coupling spark. By all rights he should not have expected it; he'd known since the dawn of his change that It would not feel special.

It was the feeling afterward that made him tremble.

It climbed through his limbs on lithe claws and settled like a purring, monstrous cat inside his belly, heavy and thick and full of razor edging. Harry's laughter spun in his ears like a whirlwind, ringing. He could hear it so much better, and only that was clearer: the sound of Harry, not the pop of the fire or the rush of wind outside. He could taste Harry in his mouth and feel him surging over and over inside his body as if he were still there.

He reached, and pulled his wandering hand back before it could find its target.

"Enjoying yourself, Potter?" he muttered. His bedmate stirred, sweat-glossed abdomen still rising and falling with each harsh breath. Draco watched, entranced, and was reminded yet again of why he was now so interested.

"Fuck." Harry's foot slid a long, slow arc over Draco's shin. The raggedy edge of a toenail prickled. "That was fucking good, Malfoy. You've got talents I never dreamt of."

Draco managed a scoff he didn't feel remotely close to. "Tut, Potter. I do believe that was a compliment."

"I don't care if it was," Harry sighed carelessly. Draco dragged his eyes down the long length of the body beside him, the same body that gave an uncontrollable shiver from shoulders to toes. Green eyes hooded. "Tell the world."

"And give you the importance you've been craving? Perish the thought." His body felt raw, opened like a door in a storm. Draco felt for pain and found none but the hinted edge of it, in every muscle, every bone. Harry was still _in_ him, ragged and sobering and far too familiar now. Draco felt hollowed out, uncomfortably so, touched in all the wrong places and all the right ones, but they were the same places, and Harry had done it, split his seams like this and left them dangling in the void.

Harry rolled with a grin that left his eyes dark and feral, and stroked one hand lazily down the slope of Draco's chest, setting off a flurry of tingling that faded almost immediately but was entirely new, entirely. He mouthed the side of Draco's throat in a wet kiss, more a suckle than a brush of lips. Draco felt the slick edge of Harry's tongue and stopped breathing at the sheer difference in the touch.

"I'd like to say we should do it again, but I'm afraid," and here Harry's chuckle returned, quivering against Draco's neck, "that I haven't the strength."

The possibility was suddenly there and Draco had never been more irrationally afraid of anything in his life. This time his hand found Harry's arm and gripped, stopping the shift of the other man's body toward the side of the bed. Harry halted and looked at him, nonplussed, and Draco loathed the already-dissipating betrayal of his body. Why had he grabbed Harry anyway?

It had felt vital to keep Harry there.

"If you're worn out," he said as silkily as he could, "or broken, Potter, then you should sleep."

Harry stared at him for a moment, and then cocked his head. The sound of his laugh was a harsh bark. Only humour, and anticipation. "Quite right. I'll wake you in an hour and we'll see who breaks first."

He turned onto his side, his back to Draco, and promptly fell onto the mattress, snatching at one of the scattered pillows. Draco let him move to get comfortable, adjusting himself in time until he could excuse the contact their bodies made, his own front flush with Harry's back. The rush of the first full inhalation he felt from his bedmate filled his body, soothing the strange uncertainty that lingered. Draco pressed his chin into the hollow of Harry's shoulder and shut his eyes, wondering how one could feel so disrupted and so fulfilled all at once.

* * *

Snape was there when he returned, standing with his arms crossed in the folds of his cloak. The man's eyes were trained on him in the darkness. "Where were you?"

Draco's breath hitched. He turned slowly and leered at Snape.

"Do you really need to know _where_ I was on the fourth night of my five, Severus?"

Snape's scowl was as dark as the shadows swallowing the candlelight.

But he left.

* * *

_Other princes and princesses tried their hand at comforting the Prince of Snakes, but alas, he could find no one who made him feel well again, no kindhearted maiden or dashing lord to quicken his heart again. Soon, they all left him to his lonely darkness and went away._

 

Draco reached forward and touched the girl's face. She shied back as far as the chains would allow. Her cheeks were streaked with grime, and he could see that she knew what he was in the wide hollows of her eyes. She had no word for it, but on some instinctive, primal level, she knew he wasn't like her, and she was aware of why she was there.

He grabbed her around the back of her neck and jerked her into stillness. She swallowed; her throat rippled against his hand. Draco frowned and leaned forward. He could feel Marcus Flint watching him and suddenly hated it. He wanted to claw the man's eyes out, throw him against the wall and batter him into it until the eyes left in his head could not see anything at all.

The girl smelled of sweat, of fear, pooling in every droplet of perspiration, sliding down the slender arch of her neck. Dirt there. Peaches, the sweet, toxic scent of lotion rubbed into her skin a day ago, perhaps the night before. Draco bent and slid his gaze over her torso, her small breasts and curved hips under filthy clothing. Shoulders heaving with each indrawn breath. She quivered as he moved up and down her body, staying remarkably still. He had not touched her save for the hand at her neck, until he rose and met her gaze once more. Her eyes were wide, lashes clumped together with barely shed tears. Tendrils of honey-brown hair swooped down her forehead, clinging and shifting in the slight draft.

His stomach began to hurt.

Draco reached up and stopped, hand several inches from her face. She stared at it, then him, and he could see exhaustion there, pleading with him to explain to her why she was being put through this, why he made her feel so alive, and yet so frightened, why she could not reconcile what her body was telling her with what her eyes took in. He touched her cheek, breathing some of his heat into her skin. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped into a round "o." She stared at him openly. He felt her body relax, rippling the air between them. Her scent changed almost imperceptibly— arousal— and he wondered how much of the real him she had been allowed to see in that instant.

It was all wrong. The smell was wrong, the planes of her body were… wrong. Draco's chest clamped tight and he struggled with himself for a long moment. The heat was refusing; yes, it was rising and rising as it was wont to do, but it was sour heat, _not right_ , and it bent his nerves in the wrong directions, plucked at his veins with insistent talons. He jerked his hand from the girl's cheek and she sagged, still staring at him through dazed eyes.

"She's not going to work." The strange tightening in his chest made his voice flat.

Flint stirred, glancing at the girl, then turning to Draco. His eyebrows pinched. "What the fuck are you… Malfoy, it doesn't matter, does it? Just take her when you need her. That's how it works, right?"

Draco ground his teeth. A dull ache was pounding in his bones, both recognisable as well as not. "You know so little about anything that I'm surprised you've survived in the company of the Malfoy family for as long as you have, Flint."

The girl was still looking at him. Her eyes had lost some of that luster, but the curious hurt in them was still there. Draco grew angry. He knew that look. He'd seen it before.

"Get her out of here."

"But then who are you going—"

Draco spun and slammed his fist into the wall beside the man's head. _"Get her out of here."_

Flint took a minute to compose himself, and then started for the girl on the wall. Draco heard the clink of chains and smelled the change in the air. She was afraid again, cowering against the moisture-slick stones. He heard Flint pull her toward the door; she stumbled and the sound struck Draco as completely wrong all over again. He closed his eyes and breathed.

"Don't worry, love," Flint was murmuring. "I'm sure we can find uses for you."

Draco opened his eyes and turned. "Flint."

The man stopped and looked at him. His captive had pulled herself as low as possible, stretching her tethered arm to its limit. She stared at Draco through the shadows made by her hair.

"Obliviate her and send her home."

Flint's sound of shock passed through the room. "What?"

The girl's eyes were wide again, lower lip quivering. Something darted there, pushing against him with feeble fingers. His stomach lurched and he snapped his gaze to Flint's furious scowl.

"Flint," he whispered. He let the cold fire consume him, roll up through his body until it flickered against the inside of his skin. The girl let out a ragged gasp. "If I discover you have kept her here or done anything to her, I will show you exactly how _it_ works. How _I_ work. I will see to it that you do not enjoy the experience. Obliviate her. Send her home."

Flint's ashen face was the second to last thing he saw as the cell door swung shut behind the pair. The last thing was the girl's equally pale face. Her eyes were soft upon him as she was pulled away.

Draco took three deep breaths, then slammed his hand repeatedly into the wall until the agony ate up what was left of the hollow sense of wrongness inside. The white light faded.

* * *

_What else is there to tell you about a Veela? Ah yes! There is one thing, my treasure. Can you guess? No? Veela are precognitive. Surely you have heard that word before._

_Yes, that is it exactly: a Veela can see its own future. Only once or twice, but once or twice is more than enough, don't you think? Now that is a frightening idea indeed. Would you want to see your future, my dove?_

 

He thought he should have felt it. Surely, surely he would _know_. But he felt nothing, no wave of white light or keening in the cavity of his chest, not until he saw the bodies with their stunning blond hair and the perfect, porcelain skin of his mother, greying in the stillness. They lay there in the darkness, and he _should_ have felt it happen.

But there was nothing.

* * *

The colours were too vibrant, glowing like lantern lights. Draco made it all the way onto the bed, feeling the void closing behind, the knotted sheets digging into his back and Harry rigid above, eyes blissfully half-shut as he rode him. Draco could see the golden curve of bare flesh and the thin trails of sweat glistening down the firm arc of Harry's sides. He could see nothing beyond the bed but black. Hollowness echoed in his own ears, the tight tingle skating through his loins and shattering off the walls of the empty space. Draco pressed up with one knee, grabbed Harry's waist and rolled him over, flattening Harry to the bed with one tight, hard thrust of his hips.

It was seeing Harry beneath him that did it, muscles taut and green eyes fixed and looking up, beyond the dark heat of Harry's face. Draco's tiny ball of pain exploded and he reared, snapping Harry to him, hearing the ragged hiss and witnessing the grimace on Harry's familiar features. He clawed at the other man's chest with both hands. Beating fists.

"Fuck! You bloody shite, how could you do it— Potter, you fucking— _fucker_ —"

Harry's hands tightened over his shoulders. His thighs squeezed Draco's hips, framing and quivering. Harry stared at him, grim-faced. "Draco. It wasn't me," he said in a soft voice. It was the first time he'd used Draco's first name.

Draco smelled iron and saw the salt of his own tears dotting Harry's cheeks. He shook his head, shook it, and then just shook, and dropped across Harry's chest, heaving and gasping and hating. He felt hands curl over his shoulder blades. Harry's legs tensed around his waist. His lover breathed quietly and rapidly, turned his head to rest it against Draco's hair.

For a moment, it was alright to break.

Draco woke to shafts of dusty, grimy yellow light stabbing through the holes in the curtains. The bed was empty beside him and the air smelled of nothing but forgotten age. He couldn't remember if he'd been alone. If he'd dreamt it or done it. If his parents were dead or not.

* * *

_The Prince of Snakes searched the entire kingdom. He traveled far and wide, growing weaker and weaker, and yet, he could not find the one he sought. The Prince of Stars was nowhere to be found._

_Little did he know that the Prince of Stars was right under his nose, feeling, yearning for him. He was imprisoned in the power of the Red Witch, an evil woman from a faraway land. She swept all memories of the Prince of Snakes from the Prince of Stars' mind, and kept the Prince of Stars locked in a high tower where only she could reach him. There she sang him lullabies and fed him sweetmeats until he forgot everything except her face._

 

The cold air grated. Draco scraped his fingers over the stone walls of the corridor, grinding down his nails, striding faster, and faster yet. Feeling warm, moist heat all around him, sickening, fuck, _everywhere_. The pungent taste in the back of his throat hurt; Draco spat onto the stones, doubled over against the wall and dug his thumbs into his eyes until the light pressed purple and deep.

And yet the obscene heat within him flared, wings unfurling, shredding the air. Insisting. Draco bit through his tongue and the iron flood mingled with the echo-sound of Ginny Weasley's breathy gasps. He felt it pinching within him, a climax that was not his, and tasted her all over his tongue beneath the blood.

Flight, plummeting. Poisoned light. Harry moved, a gentle, languid, surreal thrust of his hips, and Draco felt the moan, _girl's voice,_ shudder through his body. Cottony sheets twisted beneath thinner fingers than his. His stomach burnt and fell into ash. Draco groaned. Turned from the wall all aflame. Made for his room while seeing another room.

He found Pansy Parkinson lounging naked across his bed, smirking. He pushed her down, ran his hands over her body, and let that hateful heat burst over her in waves until she writhed beneath him, gasping for air, for the gods, for the very sun, as her body convulsed again and again. Her voice became another woman's, her fair hair burgundy in the candlelight, her movements against his body slow and tortuous, filled with soft sounds and Harry's scent and sweat, until his gut stabbed at him and he thrust Pansy from him. He left her bathed in white, moaning helplessly and stroking her fingers over her breasts and between her legs while her body continued to shudder exquisitely over his sheets— over and over— and sought out Macnair, the ache pulsing in his groin, burying himself in the other man's body until Harry's desperate moans quieted and the echo of Ginny Weasley's hushed gasps left him alone in the darkness. He shut his eyes and drifted, waiting for the raw edges within him to close again.

* * *

Voldemort's screaming raked right through the stones and bled all over the room. Draco stared down at new bodies he'd seen before, his mother prim and lifeless and staring at the ceiling, his father's hair a tarnished silver arc across the filth on the ground. The Dark Lord snarled, and the room lit green and skated over the walls. The Death Eater to the right tumbled without a sound. The second ran for the door, her momentum carrying her face first into the wood when Voldemort's curse found her. This time the colours were pale, muted with the ghastly light of truth.

"No, you're already gone," Draco said, quite clearly, to his mother. He could still feel the pressure of magic, of the battle that he had just left. Still smelt the death he'd left behind. And while he had fought simpering wizards and witches, this had… Voldemort's rage continued on either side of his words. Draco remembered dreams. Remembered arms around him as if they had been real.

Was sure they had been.

 _"Find them,"_ the Dark Lord hissed. "Make them bleed for it," and he stabbed a long, malformed finger down at the corpses, dead Veela blood. _"Do you realise what we've lost?"_

Draco's belly performed a slow, deathly roll. Once. Again. His father's lips were pale grey and Draco knew very suddenly that no earthly sound would issue from them ever again. He was alone. There was no one in the room except him, and yet Voldemort spoke, "Get out of his way, you fools," and Draco flung living, breathing bodies aside. His heart thudded too hard in his chest— empty, so very empty— but he'd felt full once. The sound of his given name echoed in his ears like a wisp of mist, in one voice only. Deep. Soothing.

_His._

Draco took the silent corridors up and out. The sky was deep night-blue, speckled with cold, white stars. He cracked away, cracked back out of the void, and saw shapeless windows and a sagging door. Ragged curtains. Draco tore through the wards absently, put them back behind him, and found the room he sought containing one inhabitant who looked at him with sharp emerald eyes as he entered.

"What's wrong with you?" Harry stared at him, one hand still on the cloak that lay across faded blankets once rich with colour. His smell permeated the room, swam in Draco's nostrils and flowed into his bloodstream like a sinister, cool trickle.

"Shut up, Potter," he ground out. He paced across the darkened little room, unfastened his own cloak and flung it over the shabby chair hunched near the lit hearth. Harry smirked, and Draco could almost hear it in his ears.

"You weren't due for a few more days. I'd been hoping for a quiet night."

"You're a liar," Draco responded, and it was very simple. Harry gave a soft snort.

"And you're lucky no one else is in." Harry crossed to the chair, leaned around him, and gathered his cloak in one wide, sinewy hand. Draco watched it draw back, fingers closing around the material. Harry's breath whispered over his face, purposeful and tempting.

Draco saw blood-streaked blond hair, dull silver on the filthy stones. Had to stop himself from reaching out and pulling that hand free of its burden, interlocking fingers and squeezing until Harry gasped in pain and pushed him aside only to tug him back ferociously and—

He did not move. The scent of Harry's body, his hair and worn clothing, veiled the memory of his dead parents, and for an instant, the pain receded.

Harry took the cloak and tossed it alongside his own on the bedspread. Draco stared at the two dark shapes side by side, so alike. He couldn't even tell which was his and which was Harry's.

"You shouldn't be here," Harry said. His features were bent in a pensive frown but they were not turned on Draco. "Bad night for it."

"And when is it ever a good night?" Draco grated out. Harry's eyes finally met his. The tiniest, weariest smirk was there. Something in Draco shifted hard to the side and he had to swallow.

Harry approached without seeming to intend it, a sideways meander between bed and chair. Draco's skin rippled unsettlingly the closer he came. Perfect, maddening pulses over hair and flesh. He recognised them; his entire body jumped toward them, stirring itself, pulling at its edges and stretching forward. It was difficult not to move. His breathing had quickened before he knew it, and Harry's scent…

Draco inhaled deeply, and then Harry was right there before him.

"Get down to business, shall we?" the dark-haired man murmured.

The first touch was a shard of heat zinging through him. Draco arched without thinking, and Harry's hand caught at him between the legs and squeezed, kneaded. Rubbed. Green eyes opened wide, a belated sort of shock, but Draco's fingers had climbed over his bare arms already and were bathing in each pulse skipping between them. Harry bent his head and seized a hard, painful kiss, full of teeth and thrusting tongue. Draco felt a different sort of hurt then, something that was not his, and for a beat of his heart, he froze. Like a tantalising breeze, Harry's lips were gone, working down his throat in sharp bites and swipes. Draco yanked Harry's body against his, pulling their groins together, and blew out a breath as the harrowing ache inside him eased a little bit more. Harry's hands cupped his backside and hiked him nearer still. He could feel the plain, hard length of Harry pressed tightly against him.

It slipped out of Harry's mouth before Draco caught the quick inhalation preceding it. "Need this tonight."

He clutched Harry's neck and said nothing, looking over the other man's shoulder at the shadowed wooden wall of the room. _Gods…_ Wasn't sure if he spoke it aloud or not. _My mother._

He needed… Salazar, he needed. There was not enough skin to touch or clothing to grab, or hair to curl his fingers through. His whole body began a slow, solid throb, like a drum's beat. He gasped with it, and then Harry turned his head and spoke again, a breathless murmur right at his ear. "How long do you have?"

Draco's hearing felt muted, as if he were listening to a voice underwater. Falling, he was falling. He struggled out of the haze one more time, thinking only of skin melding to skin, sweat mingling with sweat, and the taste of Harry's mouth forever in his. But underneath it, the sightless eyes of his parents still stared and their bodies still stretched across a floor somewhere in the darkness. His pain rippled back again and he answered on it. "I have dead to bury."

Harry stiffened. His hands closed tightly, one around Draco's hip, one at his shoulder. "You have dead."

It was a statement, not yet cold because Harry's voice still hung with breathless heat. But the tone was as flat as the ice it could have held. Draco pulled back, and his body immediately cried out against the loss, but this time it was not enough to override the irritation. "What did you think, Potter?" he said shortly. "That the war just up and stopped at your convenience?"

Another heart's beat, and Harry pushed him away. He ran a hand through tangled black hair, but his eyes never left Draco's face, and there they sparked, heavy-lidded. "Where were you?"

This time the chill was there, the rest of the question obvious. Draco's scowl filled his face readily and he couldn't be bothered to care. The hurt inside him beat against the pressure outside, infuriating him. Harry was so near, but it felt like miles between them. "What do you care where I was?" he snarled. Harry's eyes darkened.

"You want asylum," Harry forced out, "you tell me why I should give it to you. Where were you?"

Suspicion. It was not surprising; Draco lived with it every day. But tonight, somehow… it bit deeper.

"Reporting to my Dark Lord," he snapped, sarcasm etching his words. "Or maybe out killing Muggles. Which would make you happy, Saint Potter?"

"Fuck you— I ought to take you to the Order right now." Harry's wand was suddenly in his hand. Just as quickly, Draco knocked it away, almost feeling the hum of its magic before he saw it. It clattered to the floor, but still the tingling in the air increased, and Harry made no move to go after his fallen wand. His eyes seethed fire into the room, chest heaving mere feet away from Draco's.

The air began to vibrate.

"You are a lying—" Harry changed ideas right in the middle of the sentence. "We lost four people tonight! And you're going to tell me that the whole time you were waiting around here for me to show up and let you in?"

Draco curled his lip. "I'll tell you whatever I think will get me the best results. It hardly matters if I was there or not, not to you. But don't forget that there were two sides to that fight, Potter! For all I know, you were there slaughtering people right along with the rest."

Harry laughed, a tight, ugly sound. "Don't even play the innocent caught in the crossfire, Malfoy. I know you're a killer. I just didn't know you still did it in _his_ name."

"And what about the people you've killed?" Draco shot back. His head felt raw, it ached like an open wound, and there in his chest, something was bleeding down into him, another wound that was not closed yet and should have been. "Every day you sorry lot throw another body down in front of us! It serves your friends right to be massacred for what they've done!"

"I couldn't give a damn about your bloody Death Eaters," Harry snapped. "What do I care about them? They're murdering bastards. I protect my own, and they're not on my side. My people are dead, that's all that matters to me!"

"And who do you suppose was responsible for that?" Draco said, a silky slice into the tense air.

"You fucking shite," Harry hissed. His voice was shaking. The sweat dotting his shoulders gleamed like tiny pearls in the firelight. Draco sneered, and it felt hideous, stabbed through with the loss deep in his body. Mother… Fa…

"Who's the shite, after all?" Draco sneered, feeling the prick of loathing, of a hurt untended roiling around inside. "Fraternising with me, in your very own safe house. Oh yes, out of everything, that will be the best you have to offer to your little group of dead friends! Tell them that over their graves, why don't you? Give them white lilies and tell them what their killer thought about while he watched them die."

"Fuck you!" Harry shouted, face a furious red. His hands clenched so hard they trembled. "I've never told you a thing! You are nothing to me! This is nothing, your damned Dark Lord is going to lose this war, and then where will you be?"

Draco reared up. "You fucked a Death Eater, Potter!" he spat. "The Golden Boy fucked a Death Eater and _liked_ it. That's what you have to show for yourself!"

Magic lashed at him in a hot wave and Harry's fist slammed into his cheek. Draco reeled back, feeling his lip split, then dove forward, swinging and connecting with Harry's chin. A growling cry, a fist to his stomach; Draco grabbed Harry's hair and wrenched as hard as he could. Hands pushed him roughly, ripping at his collar, Draco overbalanced, and suddenly they were on the floor, tearing at each other's clothing, scratching at eyes and throats, and then rutting like animals against the pocked stone. Harry's fingers were burning points against his back, his face, and Draco wrapped his legs around him and squeezed as tightly as he could. His mouth found lips, but only for an instant; hot, stilted breath, and Draco had never known such peace as he did the moment Harry came deep inside him. He fell back, hand clenched in obsidian hair, shuddering helplessly through his own climax. Harry's hips thrust again weakly and Draco suddenly realised that this time, his Veela powers had lain dormant, completely unused.

Harsh breathing in the new stillness, slick warmth pressed against him, and then Harry rolled away, scrabbling for something on the ground. But Draco was faster, on his feet with his wand pointing at Harry's heaving chest.

"Don't even think about it, Potter," he hissed.

Sweat was running down Harry's shoulders. His wand hand clenched tightly but remained at his side, pressed against a bare thigh. Draco wiped his mouth and summoned the remains of his clothing to him with his free hand. Harry's eyes were penetrating from the shadows over his face. Draco sought them across the room, the incandescent glow in his own body stretching out, still simmering.

Pure, unadulterated hatred stared back at him. Something smothered inside of Draco. Ripped edges of something tangled around his heart and lungs and the skin of his back, the ends drifting.

Harry glared at him wordlessly and Draco Apparated away. He stood naked in the center of his cold chamber in Voldemort's lair, breathing hard. The silence weighted the air until it was pushing against his skin. Draco closed his eyes and pressed his hands over his face.

* * *

_For years the Prince of Snakes searched, and meanwhile the Lord of Night's magic turned the crops to dust, the people to stone. The land grew dark, the sun was blotted out. There was nowhere left to run._

 

The nights climbed over each other, one, then two, all the way to five. He chose bedmates for every night of his heat, and yet the relief was dull, the satisfaction short-lived, if there at all. On the sixth night, the deep, raw ache low in his belly only faded the tiniest of slivers. The seventh night showed no signs of relief. He woke often enough to find his room bathed in white, his pelvis on fire, and something trying to claw its way from his back. The light pushed on his lungs and heart, his dreams whorled and scattered into it, and he tasted copper between his lips and found his fingernails broken from clawing at the head of his bed.

After twelve nights, Draco learned to ignore it, when his dreams allowed. Eventually it sank, and lessened.

* * *

The Auror had been astoundingly easy. The information had veritably leapt from his mouth. Draco wasted no time in killing him. He had already turned away before the flaying white light faded off the rough-hewn stones.

Flint smiled at him weakly. "Christmas Eve. Who'd have thought they'd be such fools?"

Draco unlocked the cell door and met Flint's gaze. His head was pounding dully, the constant ache now more of a weight than a sense of pain. He did not even look at the body of the Auror. "Throw it on Dumbledore's grave for anyone who's clever enough to look there. I'll tell Lord Voldemort myself."

Snape was waiting in the corridor. The torches cast him half in sallow orange, half in shadow.

"And who might that have been?"

Draco lifted one hand to his forehead and let it drop again without touching. "I don't care."

"The Order?"

"He was at Hogwarts with me," Draco said blandly.

Snape's eyebrow rose. He folded his arms in his robes and swept after Draco as he walked. "Perhaps you should have let someone else handle him," he said quietly.

Draco closed his eyes. He resisted the urge to touch his temple again. The throb in his skull flowed down his neck into his shoulders. At least the other, lower throbbing pain had departed for the remainder of the daylight hours. "It was not a difficult interrogation, Severus."

"Any useful information?" Spoken in a flat tone. Draco breathed deeply through his nose.

"Plenty. Change in wards, Christmas Eve. It will be simple."

The scrape of their footsteps echoed. Draco felt the agitation breathing off of his companion. He took another lungful of air and let it out slowly. His head pulsed on. "What."

"Do not volunteer to be a part of this attack, Draco."

He stopped. Snape stopped as well, watching him across the scant feet separating them. Draco squinted. There was something there under the man's usual scowl. If Draco did not have this damned ache everywhere, he could have… "Why shouldn't I?" he said coldly.

Snape's shrewd gaze was on him, sweeping his entire form. "You… are at a sensitive time, Draco. You may not be thinking clearly."

Draco studied the man for a moment. Then he stepped away. "My mind has never been more clear, Severus."

It was the truth. For all the pounding, all the stabbing in his skull, he could _see_. At last. It was all so easy, so hatefully obvious to him. Snape's face contorted. His lips thinned; the tip of his tongue came out to wet them. "Draco. Your parents are dead. You need to think carefully about what options you have left now."

Draco turned his head slowly to stare at the other man's face. "I have considered my options, _Snape_." A beat. "Have you considered yours?"

Snape's brows went down over dark eyes. "Mr Malfoy, do not presume to—"

"No, it is _you_ who presume." He felt as if he were a shell, hinged open and clicked back together again with nothing inside. So simple. "I know what I am. I choose to be what I am. And I have a job to do."

Snape said nothing more and Draco left him in the dim hallway, following the pulsing waves leaking down his body. He made his way to Voldemort's chambers.

The night came and he spent it alone with the agony in his groin and chest for the first time.

* * *

_And then, one night, the Lord of Night attacked the tower where the Prince of Stars was kept. The Prince of Stars rushed out to face him, to stop him. For three days they fought. But the Prince of Stars had been weakened by the Red Witch, and the Lord of Night overwhelmed him at last and rose up, roaring, to strike him down._

_But the Prince of Snakes had heard of the battle and came upon them, and threw himself in front of the shining blade, calling on all the power of his curse to save his love. A bright light split the heavens and burned the Lord of Night's evil from the land. The lord was consumed in a flash of fire, and the Prince of Snakes fell to the ground, mortally wounded._

 

The castle was ablaze.

Draco ran through the trees, debris raining on his shoulders and head from spells not aimed at him. They were not aimed at much of anything and yet they blasted the forest to bits and littered the ground with wooden shrapnel.

He smelled sweat. Movement to his right, deep in what darkness remained to a burning forest. His blood rose oily and hot, flaring into his ears and temples, straining his fingertips and shooting down into his legs. The flames from the forest's edge turned the endless tree trunks red. Ash slicked his skin and weighted his eyelashes, and the scent of smouldering filled his nostrils.

Beyond the final line of trees, spells slammed into each other with deafening claps. Human voices screamed and yelled.

Draco followed the beacon of the living through the blood-red trees, the sound of a rapid heartbeat thumping in his ears. Not his heartbeat.

He could feel the trees slinking around him as if they touched the fine hairs on his forearms and gave way to let him through. He felt them, vibrant green bodies in a black void, shuddering breath in their limbs, and the silky hiss of fire crawling ever forward. Devouring. There was nothing but _human_ in this forest; all the other creatures had fled. Draco let his jaw fall open, tasting the air. He felt smaller somehow. Enclosed, chains he could not see binding his hands, his feet. His shoulders.

He smelled _Death Eater_ , black magic woven all through her. She broke through the trees before him, her robes muddied— took one look at him and flung herself back into the shadows with a cry. He heard her fall, scrabbling to her feet again. Running sightlessly away. Draco turned, scenting spells on the clotted air, and made for the forest's edge. Soot blotted out his senses and for a moment, he swam through fog.

"Malfoy!"

Golden hair under dirt. Draco stared across the clearing and heard the repulsion in the voice, saw the fear on a pale face. All in an instant: tall, male, not Death Eater, sweat and filth and wide blue eyes, Finnigan. Draco snapped his wand upright.

Finnigan lunged to the side and the tree he'd been standing in front of blasted to pieces. A stunning spell shot out of the Auror's wand. Draco batted it aside easily. The next spell sliced deeply into his cheek. Draco growled and slammed Finnigan into the dirt with a hurling hex. The man rolled, crawled to his feet. Draco could taste his blood on the air. His shoulders began to ache fiercely.

"Malfoy, you piece of shite," the man breathed hatefully. And then he froze, staring straight at him. His face and wand hand had gone slack. "What in fuck…?"

"You filthy half-breed," Draco gritted out. His back was a mass of pain, not from any spell, and the long-born hurt in his belly was finally climbing out through his limbs, pulsing in his fingertips. He saw Finnigan in an outline of white, molten sparks bleeding from his blue eyes. Draco thought _closer_ … and then he was.

Finnigan gave a shout of shock. He flung up a Cruciatus and Draco writhed in blinding heat, stabbing his way out through it, snarling and hating and fierce until the spell cracked right off of him. He raised his wand and stabbed it into Finnigan's breastbone.

_"Avada Kedavra."_

The Auror tumbled to the forest floor, hand still fisted around his own wand like twisted flesh. Draco moved on by, breathing hard around the filth and fire.

The claws under the skin of his back dug deeper.

He spilled out of the forest to a cataclysm of ferocious light, greens and purples and yellows clashing in the sky. He saw a tattered pile of black robes before him in the singed grass and smelled death among them. It howled against his skin.

A tall woman stood yards away from the forest's burning edge, hurling curse after curse into another black-robed figure. She upended the Death Eater with a practiced flick. Draco sneered and cast a Killing Curse into her back, dropping her to the ground with a final, startled grunt. Draco did not bother to watch her fall; he spun and skirted along the tree-line, ducking the flying bits of wood and leaves. The castle's fire raged fiercely, turning the grounds a bright, liquid orange. On the grass, figures blurred and twisted, the heat wafting up around them. Draco blinked, slowing.

He could see white in little flickers, edging each silhouette, trembling from the tip of every wand. His back pulsed strangely. Draco clenched his jaw, willing the pain away. His hands felt too big, swollen and not his own. And he had the sensation that he was moving too slowly. _Hurry,_ it said inside him, _hurry, faster. You can go much faster than this._

Then a new fire erupted in his left arm. Draco growled, clutching his flesh with his right hand, squeezing. The Mark on his skin wriggled hatefully, melting into his muscles and bones like hot wax. He cursed, then spun out a spell at a wizard who rushed at him, and turned around in place, searching. The Dark Lord's call was unmistakable; Draco seethed with sudden ebullience. It was not a call for help, nor a summons of fury. The battlefield raged, and somehow Draco knew that his lord had seen victory near enough to reach out and seize it. He was calling his Death Eaters home to witness. To be the eyes to his feat.

Draco found him at last, in the hot light of the castle with sparks and ash showering down and swirling up in torrents: a blot of streaming black against the impenetrable orange, twisted white face and white hands. Billowing spells in hashes of colour so bright it hurt the eyes. Voldemort's spells cracked and sliced heavily, battering a cacophony of counter-spells that flew thicker than snow. Draco needed no prophecy to tell him who was at the other end of that duel. He halted well outside the rain of magic and watched the boy saviour troll out his power, one spell after another.

More figures in dark robes joined the watchers, standing side by side with battered Aurors, sprinkled in amongst those still tearing each other apart, oblivious to the prophesied battle of two. Voldemort locked his opponent's wand with his and wrenched. The Boy Who Lived wrenched back, and the magic tether swung out and cut a smouldering furrow in the grass. Voldemort cried out madly and yanked his wand free, then hurled a fiery yellow hex with all his might. Draco watched, frozen, as it hit Potter full in the chest.

He felt something sway violently sideways inside him.

Draco stumbled to his knees and blinked rapidly at the crinkled, blackened grass in front of his nose. Blue light exploded further off, nearer to the flaming hulk of Hogwarts. The magic skittered over his skin and sank into his bare flesh, and there was a soothing, insufferable, desperately familiar core within it. Draco heard a keening sound, knew it was his own voice, and felt the magic coalesce quite suddenly—

_Harry._

Draco pulled his head up and saw two walls of colour before him where the battle should have been: piercing, seething gold, with flickering blackness all around it. The blackness held a spice he knew— red eyes, half-human, thrillingandcoldandforever— it seared into the gold, a rampant, sublime dragon. Harry's magic cracked through the air again and the gold flared so brightly Draco could not look. He saw figures in the darkness of his mind, one bent and warped and twisted, the other tall and maddening and proud, with light zinging from their very fingers and blowing the air to pieces just inches from each other.

When he opened his eyes again, the scent on the wind was Harry's blood.

 _It_ lurched to life within him with a vicious hiss. Draco let out an enraged cry and arched back, feeling something tear through his shoulders, through the tips of his fingers. His eyes filled with searing white. Harry's blood. Spilled. The smell of Harry curled inside him, bringing firelight and shadows, skin gleaming with sweat, the bare arc of muscles flexing right against him, and anger so profound, so elemental, it ripped his voice into ten hurtling voices all at once. Harry. Har… _His._

The tang of black magic sheared through the scent of his mate, rimmed sharply with death.

Draco whipped his head toward the smell and saw black robes and crimson eyes at last, a snake's mouth open and shrieking laughter. Pure, volatile hatred flooded his body. His limbs moved on their own, more limbs than he'd had before, clawing forward toward the one in his sight, furious with the need to get between the snake and His. The screams around him flowed into a gruesome torrent in his ears, but he could see His now, bent , staggering, bleeding and bathed in death.

The world filled with green light.

Draco let out a howl and reached, stretched grasping talons for the snake. The snake gave a horrid cry, eyes red and blistering with terror, and then Draco had him, piercing his flesh with his fingernails, rending, tearing, needing to burn, _burn, burn him out, burn him, burn burnburnBURN—_

Harry's scent swept through him, a peaceful tide, and Draco's mind went up in white-hot fire.

* * *

_The Prince of Stars cradled him and shed many tears. He begged for a way to save him, so they would never be apart. The Prince of Snakes had no voice left, but he whispered the three magic words of the spell. The Prince of Stars held him close and whispered them back._

 

The world was dim and flat. Draco stared up into a night sky clouded with smoke. Foggy grey sparks dotted the void. He breathed and felt the rattle within.

He tried to curl his fingers. His limbs were dead things, heavy as stone. The cool air kissed what must have been his skin, and the agony was everywhere.

He turned his eyes with all his effort and saw the warm pink of skin above him, fuzzy green and wayward black. He blinked and it was Harry looking down at him. The rest of the world— the stars and trees and castle— was soft and swollen, but Harry's face was sharp and clear. Fair cheeks smudged with grime, broken glasses over eyes the colour of the untorched forest.

Draco tried to roll. Tried to move. His hand jumped and thudded back to earth. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. _Harry._

Harry's lips moved, muted, in the shape of a name. Was it… his? He frowned vaguely. Tried to move again, closer, all he needed was closer, and Harry moved instead, reached and gathered up his hand. It was the only touch that did not hurt.

 _He's dead,_ Draco croaked. _And… You are alive._

Harry's fingers tightened around his. Draco drew another breath and could not understand the ache, deep and filling. It ran into his bones and threaded through each muscle. His body felt like it was made of marble, and his back felt broken.

He coughed and tasted blood on his tongue. The stench of scorched flesh and cloth was all around him. He recognised it for an instant, the smell of black and red, of old evil, but it faded, leaving nothing in its wake but a strange, weary satisfaction.

He squeezed Harry's hand and the ache numbed the tiniest bit. _Mine,_ he said. _We._ Smoke rolled between them and Draco choked, desperate to see through it, unable to see Harry, and needing— Harry leaned closer, flowing warmth. Draco's vision blurred.

The dark room entered his mind as if he were inside it again. Tattered curtains, a low fire. Cold floors underfoot and a body atop his. Inside his. He wrapped himself around it and clung, and the blackness encroached, but they were together and there was heat and he was whole, and it could not touch them.

The already dim world went darker. Harry's face loomed like a beacon. Draco realised with an odd sort of fascination that he could no longer feel his own body.

He pulled Harry closer, remembering the motion. _Harry?_

He thought Harry spoke. But he couldn't hear the words.

 _N…_ He tried again. _Need you… I l… lov…_

The last thing he saw was the ripple of Harry's throat as he swallowed, and he thought it the most perfect sight.

* * *

_Lightning burst in the sky, and the world rocked and shuddered. Golden rain began to fall. The Prince of Stars had broken their curses with the magic spell. The Prince of Snakes opened his eyes and found his body whole once more. He rose to his feet and took the hand of his love, and knew they would never be parted again._

_The Prince of Stars and the Prince of Snakes ruled over the new, shining kingdoms together, and the Lord of Night was never seen again. The land grew rich and green, and the two princes lived happily ever after._

*  
*  
*  
*

Harry stands. The fire rages at his back, but the air is cooling. He looks down at the body at his feet and sees soot in white hair.

Ginny's shoes make no sound over the grass. She breathes his name. Grabs his arm. _Harry, are you—_

He shakes his head. _I'm fine._

She peers down through smoke and fading light. _Did he… kill Voldemort?_

Harry stares down, feeling the need to be silent. Dull grey gazes blankly away over charred grass. He can see the curve of a slender, pale throat. _Yes._

She grips his arm with both her hands and shudders. _Why?_

Harry does not answer. Ginny stares at the body, at dusky skin and still limbs. _What did he say?_ she murmurs at last. Her voice is detached, a grotesque curiosity.

Harry frowns. For a long while, he stands still, looking down. _I couldn't understand the words._

She wraps her arms around him. For an instant, the touch is detestable. He hugs her close. Kisses her forehead. He remembers tensing fingers in his own, luminescent skin and piercing white light.

He lets go of her. Bends, reaches. Touches fingertips to cold, white hand.

For the breath of an instant, he feels a tug deep in his belly, the tug of loss. Complete and utter. Desolation that knows no end.

Then it is gone, and Harry raises his eyes away from the dead, to the living.

~

_And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not._

_Love._

~fin~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Bedtime Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/618315) by [RurouniHime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime), [wench_fics (WeasleyWench)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeasleyWench/pseuds/wench_fics)




End file.
